


Until Our Hearts Catch Fire

by th_esaurus



Category: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, OT3, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 15:08:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2114529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They ate around the four-seater table, Etta between them on one side and an empty chair on the other. They both, she assumed, had excellent poker faces or at least neckerchiefs over their noses and mouths when they went on their petty raids. But neither of them were good at hiding when they were sore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until Our Hearts Catch Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lizzen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizzen/gifts).



The long stretches without them; well, they were fine. They were a life.

 

Ms. Place was young and handsome, and much liked by the children she taught. Less so by the schoolmarm she worker under, but it was no matter. She had her own plot of land that her dearly departed daddy had bequeathed her, and the small wooden house that perched crooked and lonesome upon it was a source of immense pride. She had her books, her papers and graphite, an upright pianoforte that she had not tuned in a good many years. Pots and pans in the kitchen that she kept neat enough, a few good dresses in her bedroom, though they were not with the trends of city ladies. Etta didn't live in the city, and didn't care for city snobbery.

 

There was an orchard two miles down the road that she didn't own, but pilfered from on occasion. Took a basket-full to school every autumn as a treat for the children. That was, back then, the extent of her underhandedness.

 

She'd known Harry and Robert for some years by that time. It was childish, but she'd become used to calling them Sundance and Butch. It was how they called each other, and there was no less love between them for it. She was sixteen when she had first lifted her skirts for Sundance, and had told him with all the petulance of an orphaned teenager, that if he were any good and she was driven to cussin' and yellin' names, it wasn't _Sundance_ she wanted to be moaning.

 

"You'll call me Harry, then," he relented, "but don't do it loud."

 

(Butch's given name she had drawn out of him years later, under not dissimilar circumstances.)

 

It was fine. She got on, like a workhorse rather than a mourner.

 

She—ploughed her own furrows, when the boys were absent. She knew how to care of herself. Butch had asked about that last time, tactless and awkward as men often are about such things. She gently smacked his mouth and laughed and kissed Sundance, because she always wanted kisses when they talked dirty.

 

Of course, they spent much of their time together in discussion, laughing, traversing the plains, on horseback if the two had stolen horses, eating well; but she had fallen for Sundance at first because he was handsome, not for his conversation. Etta had her priorities for the first sundown of every visit.

 

Sometimes an afternoon would do.

 

Butch was still tying the horses loosely to the porch balusters, pottering around the barn to try and find them something to eat; Sundance left him too it, and gathered up Etta in his arms against the kitchen table, and yanked up her dress, put his rough hand down her drawers. "It's not gone anywhere," she said, chiding.

 

It made him growl. He growled sometimes when she bested him at words. Or when he was hard and wanting.

 

Sundance fucked her against the kitchen table, which was about the least far they'd ever made it inside the house.

 

Butch leant against the doorjamb for a minute or two, with a broken fleck of straw dangling from his lips. Watched them go at it and managed not to interject, despite the fact he was hungry and sleep-needy. He left before either of them came, though when she hit her peak soon after, Etta did it noisily; wanted him to hear. Whether he did or not—

 

The long stretches without her boys were just fine, never felt like simply passing the time. But she never lacked the confidence that they'd come back.

 

*

 

Something changed between one visit and the next.

 

They ate around the four-seater table, Etta between them on one side and an empty chair on the other. They both, she assumed, had excellent poker faces or at least neckerchiefs over their noses and mouths when they went on their petty raids. But neither of them were good at hiding when they were sore.

 

Etta put down her knife and fork and steepled her fingers above her dinner plate. "Well?" she said, in the same voice she used to settle her classroom. It was not a raised voice, but it was very, very disappointed.

 

Butch ate, guiltily.

 

Sundance kicked his chair out from under his own feet and went on the porch for a cigarette.

 

They'd tell her nothing, and she was happy to imagine it for herself.

 

They would have been drunk, of course. Maybe a single horse between them. When they were riding high after a good haul, they got sloppy with their knots; one horse bucking until it freed itself, or freed instead by tricksy hands. They would have rode out to the plains and slept where they toppled down, Butch laughing and singing and Sundance snorting at his foolishness.

 

They would have kissed wetly, open-mouthed, noisily. Butch complaining, drunk, about Sundance's moustache, trying to push it out the way with his thumb. Wouldn't have been able to keep upright. Neither of them willing to relent the upper hand; tumbling, kissing, hands on belts and shirt buttons. Nothing fancier than rutting until they brought each other off.

 

Hungover and pricks soft and come-stained the next dawn.

 

She was happy to imagine all that for herself. The truth of it, she'd never be sure of, but she was certain of the gist.

 

Butch excused himself with a mutter to smoke on the porch, at the opposite end to Sundance. The rickety porch was not that long, and the two men looked cowed.

 

It was a fresh sort of night on her little spit of land. The log fire warmed her small cabin nicely, but outside of its glow there was a chill in the air; pleasant; kept the mosquitos away and bought the stars out a-twinkling.

 

She could chastise them for their idiocy, but they did that enough to themselves.

 

"I'll get the fire going," she said softly, standing in the doorway and taking her hair out of its plait. "Come on inside."

 

Sundance looked back at her, softened, and stubbed his cigarette butt out under his boot-heel. Butch glanced back too, and then out at the darkness again. Sundance had nudged him, with his elbow at first, then his whole left side.

 

Butch flicked his own smoke out onto the damp ground. For a split second, mid air, it had looked like a fallen star.

 

*

 

Something changed between that visit and all the rest that were to come.

 

*

 

Sundance was a sweet thing, for all his dry remarks and griping and posturing with unloaded pistols in the bedroom; but, she realised, Butch made him shy. Butch, a gentleman – though he was more used to whores than women of supposed repute – kissed the back of Etta's hand before he kissed her neck. She leant into it, thanked him kindly and tritely, and smiled at Sundance's sullen face.

 

"I don't look pretty with another man's mouth on me?" she asked, holding his gaze. He had an unblinking, low stare that had never frightened her. Men found him aloof. Sometimes, she knew, he just could not think of anything memorable to say.

 

"Tell her she always looks pretty, Sundance," Butch said, grinning. Sundance shrugged and glowered and Etta couldn't help but laugh at his mood. She grabbed Butch's face and kissed him all over, the corner of his mouth, the bridge of his nose, his brows, girlish kisses that made smacking noises.

 

"You need to shave," she laughed, rubbing her knuckles over his rough jaw.

 

"You never tell him that," Butch said, good-natured.

 

"Harry," Etta said, her voice full of love and a little bit of laughter. "You look like an old maid with that sour face on. Come here and tell me how you want me."

 

"Ain't no good if you know it's coming," he grumbled, getting up and unbuttoning his cotton shirt all the same.

 

"I always know it's coming," she replied.

 

Maybe he was not as forceful with her when Butch was part of the equation, but he still pulled her into his lap with a roughness she enjoyed. Sundance had a slow way with his mouth, bit at her bottom lip the same careful way he'd mouth at her cunt later on. She wondered if his kisses with Butch were full of such promise, and held out her hand behind her back to beckon him across to them.

 

Butch was polite enough to wait until called for. Asked Etta her own permission, even if just with the incline of his head. Sometimes asked Etta to condone his hands on Sundance. That riled Sundance right up.

 

"You askin' her?" he griped, tugging on Butch's wrist.

 

"You're a good shot, but terrible at forward planning," Butch reasoned, and Etta leant aside to give them space. Not far enough away she couldn’t see their mouths come together. A little awkward at first; they always were.

 

She guided Sundance's hand palm off her waist and he took the initiative; grabbed at the back of Butch's neck and yanked him in close.

 

They had, just a single time, done it carefully on the creaking bed with both men inside of her. Butch behind, because he was gentler. "You ain't gotta treat her like porcelain," Sundance had hissed, but he too was soft and slow. Etta said afterwards she didn't care much for how cautious the two of them had been.

 

"Ungrateful," Sundance muttered.

 

"Well, I find your honesty refreshing," Butch had said, flushed and smiling.

 

For now, for tonight, she was content to lift her skirts and let them lap at her. It made her laugh and wriggle, Sundance's moustache on her skin, and the way he told Butch how to do it. "She's not one of your brothel girls, you gotta put some effort in," he said, a longer sentence than he'd strung together all night. For her sake.

 

They got distracted a time or two kissing one another. She leant up on her elbows, her legs spread, and watched them. The fire low behind them, lighting them up like they were chasing the sunset.

 

She was a teacher, a pretty, homely girl, and was not meant to have lewd tastes.

 

But she did like the way her Sundance licked into Butch's open mouth when the both of them tasted of her.

 

*

 

She tired of waiting for them sometimes, but she never tired of them.


End file.
